


In a handful of dust

by glim



Category: Angel: the Series, Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-17
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic, powerful and godlike, works its way through Morgana's blood and breath, and in an instant she knows that what she sees and hears is not just Illyria, but her own memories made manifest, pulled from time itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a handful of dust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle VIII for the prompt Illyria/Morgana, _timeless_.

"I've been here before." Morgana's fingers slide over the edge of the rail, cold as ice and still as stone, and curl tight, tighter, clinging as if to stop the swirl of time, memory, and darkness, strong enough to pull her down should she yield.

"You haven't been here yet."

"This isn't real; it's just a dream." But different from her other dreams: she doesn't see Arthur dead, or Merlin sealed in stone, or Gwen, her Gwen, tested by fire, sent into exile. This is a dream of time and power, neither of which she can command.

(Neither of which she wants to command. She wants to wake up.)

"This is very real. You just haven't lived it yet."

The gasp that rises up in Morgana's throat gets caught halfway, threatening to choke her, and her fingers tremble the moment she moves them from the railing. There is infinite power here – neither good nor evil, but with the potential to turn all the worlds around it to dust and memory – and it sharpens her senses painfully.

The guard's form flickers, shimmers, disappears into the endless dark, but not before Morgana realizes that his words are true.

"Drogyn, wait-"

Another flicker, then sudden, recognizable warmth. "You won't see him again, I don't think. You're always better at seeing the future than I am. Will be." Merlin tilts his head, curious, and glances over the edge of the walkway down to the other side of the world. "Used to be? See; I can't do the time thing."

"You guard the Deeper Well?"

"It's a cemetery, it doesn't need much guarding."

Morgana catches Merlin's wrist instead of the rail, holding him tight lest he flicker away, too. Do something, she pleads, fingers clasped tight to feel warmth, life, and magic pulse through him, wake me up, let me wake up.

"You won't see me here again, either, will you?" he asks, still curious.

"No, not here. But you'll re-set the spells and they'll hold for ages to come." Still holding onto Merlin, Morgana peers down, down the Deeper Well, down into the deepest well of time, and wakes up in Camelot.

~

"You turned the city of angels into a pile of dust, you destroyed what dominion you had, god-king."

"All human empires crumble. As yours did."

Morgana turns away, lets the hood fall from her cloak and the wind thread through her hair. "That was never my empire."

Illyria tilts her head and stares, and Morgana remembers how Merlin would do the same, the vague movement, the bright blue of his eyes, the yearning behind them that somebody would understand without him having to reveal anything. She is otherworldly, alien in ways that Merlin never could be, but there is something similar in her gaze that reminds Morgana of him, of the immeasurable depths of power and time.

"You cannot free them as you've been freed."

"I do not come to liberate. I come to know. There is magic here, stronger than any petty human could ever possess."

"The strongest. The magic of the earth itself, cast when the power over life and death was still raw." Her own magic, and Merlin's, a strange, spangling, quicksilver thread through the wind, water, and forest leaves. Morgana still feels it in every part of her body, still feels his warmth and still dreams the day she became the hidden guardian of the well. "What would you know?"

The wind shifts and sunlight spills over Illyria's hand as she rests it against the tree that stands over the well's entrance. The light tracks slowly over her body, marking time between her and Morgana, and when a few hours have passed, she sets her gaze on Morgana once more.

"You see it laid out before you: time. Not a continuum, but an entity, changing and shifting. You see it all."

"I cannot show you that." Morgana takes a step away, as if the distance could lessen the intensity of Illyria's gaze, and gasps at the touch of a finger against the side of her face.

"I could make you kneel for me, as legions have done, and crush you with a thought." The touch travels down Morgana's face to her neck, to her shoulder and outlines the shape of her collarbone. "Your power is not insignificant."

"Indeed, it is not. Nor is it something you can manipulate or bend to your own purposes, despite the worlds that have fallen behind you."

"Priestess of Avalon." It's more a statement than a title when Illyria says it. Her hand's still on Morgana's chest and rests there just as it rested against the tree. "The empire that had to hide itself instead of falling."

Morgana wets her lips with the tip of her tongue to feel the wind chill them. There, in Illyria's touch, is power, but power contained, minimized and compacted, as if the form she has could never contain the worlds of strength and knowledge inside her.

She is one of the oldest gods, transmuted to an almost human form, her magic curling inside Morgana at the slightest touch of her hand. A change in breathing, in the angle of her head, in her unblinking gaze, and Morgana feels it ripple beneath her skin.

A change in Morgana's own thoughts, the barest flicker of memory, triggers a flicker of reality.

"I can show you.

"No!" Morgana gasps, but her reaction is too late, and in the space of that one word, she sees time fall away, and sees Arthur betrayed, Merlin lost, and… "No; stop."

Illyria does. Her eyes are Merlin's eyes, as unchanging as time itself, and Morgana closes her own eyes against them.

"Not Gwen."

"She was always yours, you know. Always loved you best." Merlin's voice whispers from Illyria's lips (Merlin's lips, Morgana can see them behind her eyelids, see the way he'd press them together, when thoughtful, frightened, brave.) "I tried to make it easier for her after you left."

"I came back…" It's fruitless to argue with illusion, yet the words slip from Morgana's lips as they have for centuries of dreams and regrets. "I never left."

"You did. Again and again. You knew I couldn't keep her." Arthur. She doesn't need to open her eyes to see his hurt and confusion.

"You were never enough for her. Never good enough. Loved Merlin best, loved Lancelot better. You gave her Camelot, but you never gave her yourself."

Magic, powerful and godlike, works its way through Morgana's blood and breath, and in an instant she knows that what she sees and hears is not just Illyria, but her own memories made manifest, pulled from time itself. Hours elapse as the magic passes between them, the sun that warms Morgana setting behind her and disappearing to grace the other side of the world.

"What would you know?" Morgana opens her eyes to the gloaming and sees Illyria's still, blue gaze and wind-ruffled hair once more.

"Dust and decay. The empire that crumbled beneath your hands. Your human life."

A feeling greater than fear, sadness, or regret brings tears to Morgana's eyes and with her reply, an infinitesimal nod, the evening world shimmers around them and the forest air quivers.

"Morgana, don't cry, please, Morgana…" Warm fingers touch the corners of her eyes, brush the moisture from her eyelids, stroke the side of her face. "See, it's all right, don't be scared…"

"I'm not… it's not… I'm not crying."

It's not like that she doesn't live these flickering moments every single day. She lives them all, over and over, all at once, images and memories colliding, the past and the future more real than the present during the moments when she lets her mind spin out of control. Gwen's always here, always gone, and Morgana's never certain what moment from their life she'll remember next.

"I've missed you so, Gwen. The touch of your hands, your lips."

Gwen's smiling when Morgana opens her eyes and it's so easy to pretend. She's never used her own magic to do this, only depended on the arts of scrying and, later, memory.

"You know I always miss you when you're not around, right? I love coming out here to see you…" Gwen's fingers touch Morgana's, so gentle, so wonderfully, painfully gentle, and she leans up to brush her lips against Morgana's.

The kiss is almost tentative, and Morgana remembers the first time she kissed Gwen, when she was fourteen, the sun setting over the harvest festival and Gwen's mouth warm and tasting of honeyed wine.

The taste touches Morgana's tongue again and for a half-moment they are at the festival once more; then, in another, it's two years later, and they are in Morgana's rooms at Camelot, Gwen standing before the shuttered windows, slats of light across her bare skin and Morgana's hands cupping her breasts, her lips mouthing down the side of Gwen's neck; then, later, during the great snow that fell across all Albion, the sky and ground outside the same white as the bed linens damp beneath Morgana's back, her body arching, her heel digging into Gwen's shoulder, Gwen kissing between her thighs and pressing her tongue to the warm, wet heat inside Morgana; then, finally, it's one of their secret meetings in the forests outside Camelot before they ran out of time.

"You have them all, all those moments…" Gwen-Illyria-Gwen kisses Morgana's lips, a kiss that stutters between moments and realities, and traces her tongue over her mouth. "You never left me, not like they said you did."

"Never… never for long, never for good." And that's the truth, not some memory warped into desire by time, and the kiss they share is as real as Morgana can make it.

The illusion before Morgana shivers in the nighttime air and while it's disorienting to see two beings and a long lifetime of memories in front of her, it isn't frightening any longer. Now Morgana has the sort of control that neither divinity nor magic could grant either her or Illyria. "Don't change."

"You'd keep your illusion?" Illyria asks, though Gwen's warm eyes and shy smile form the words.

"It's your illusion, too."

The head-tilt is even more alien when Gwen does it and Morgana laughs under her breath before turning to spread her cloak over the forest floor. She conjures a silver spark of light, multiplies it many times over, and strings the lights through the branches above them.

Morgana's own dress falls from her body in one smooth moment and she steps out of her shoes onto the grass to admire Gwen, sprawled on her cloak, already naked and with need glittering in her eyes.

Because it's Gwen, and because it's Illyria living Gwen and Morgana's memories, their lovemaking is charged with a desire Morgana hasn't felt in years.

When she kisses Gwen's shoulders and licks along her collarbone, the touch is familiar, but new, like the first time they had sex, the first time Morgana tasted Gwen's skin beneath her tongue and the first time she felt her own body tighten with the need to keep tasting.

Their breasts touch and Gwen shivers, laughs, draws Morgana closer, and though her skin is heated, shivers again. Her nipples grow taut under the press of their bodies; Gwen tries to tug Morgana nearer, but Morgana slips down her body to nuzzle kisses over her breasts, tiny, delicate ones at first, then tiny, biting ones to make Gwen cry out and twist beneath Morgana.

Gwen's palms cup Morgana's shoulders and she's already wet where Morgana presses a leg between her thighs. If it were Gwen, really Gwen, Morgana might be more merciful, might slide her hand down and twist her fingers inside, press a thumb to her clit, to bring Gwen off fast and hard the first time.

She might.

Tonight, she keeps her kisses slow, wet, and teasing, moves down Gwen's body with such care that Gwen's almost shuddering with need by the time Morgana kisses the swell of her stomach. The soft, heavy musk of sex and sweat mingles with the dark, damp scent of the earth and grass, the dew settling around them with the night, and Morgana feels her heart swell along with the her arousal.

"This will be good," she whispers against Gwen's skin.

"It's always good… even when it's less good, not that it's ever bad, just… Oh, that, Morgana…"

The little trip over her words, the gasp when Morgana licks the crease of her thigh, is just so very much like her own Gwen that Morgana finds it hard to not let memory guide her. She nips at the soft skin at the inside of Gwen's thighs in the manner she knows will have Gwen gasping and begging, she nuzzles at the damp hair between them lightly, teasing, until Gwen almost sobs for her to touch her harder, closer.

Maybe mercy isn't what she takes on Gwen, for Morgana's just as desperate, her body shaking, yearning closer to Gwen, but she does what Gwen begs for. Slips her hands under Gwen, slips her tongue inside Gwen, slips it back out again to trace around her opening and lick slick warmth up around her clit. Her tongue circles the same spot, over and over, until Gwen's body arcs up with a low moan. Morgana lets her come closer, then just a bit closer, then draws her away from climax long enough so that Gwen cries out again, frustrated for a moment, then desperate with relief as she comes against Morgana.

The fingers that stroke Morgana's hip, that tease her open, and that push inside her, thrusting, twisting, clenching around the indefinable, immaterial space inside her that's too deep to be reached with only physical touch, are stronger than Gwen's fingers have ever been. But it's Gwen, always Gwen, inside that secret, deep place when Morgana climaxes, and the illusion doesn't shift again until after she awakens the next morning.

~

"Your fondness for things made of dust and dying things is tremendous." Illyria turns to face the sun, then turns back to study Morgana. "Perhaps I shall return."

"Perhaps you shall, after the magic changes again, and a different empire rises from the dusts of time."


End file.
